White Heart Read Online Free

his task, the guard escorted Thibaut out the door. On his way, my cousin sent me a pleading look, so pitiful that I almost felt sorry for him. But no. Thibaut, I now realized, was a man to be feared rather than pitied.
    Exhausted, I longed to lie on my bed again—but instead, I called Mincia and dictated a letter summoning Cardinal Romano Bonaventura, the wily papal legate who had accompanied Louis to the southern provinces. I needed to hear his account of how Louis had died, and what my enemies were saying. Did anyone suspect foul play?
    I also sent a note to Thibaut: You loved King Louis well, as you have said, but I cannot let your defection at Avignon go unpunished. You must not return to this court until I have called for you. That, I hoped, would satisfy the gossips, who would certainly read the message. Practically all the world knew of Thibaut’s love for me—a love I had encouraged, yes, for the sake of his songs of praise, performed by minstrels in courts from Castille to Constantinople. A woman’s power lies in her beauty, does it not? What my grand-mère did not say was this: Power can destroy as well as build.
    I have destroyed my husband with my vanity. A sob crested from my chest, but I swallowed it. This was no time for self-pity. Pierre Mauclerc and Hugh de Lusignan might be plotting with the English king even now, touting the crown of France as easily plucked from a woman’s hand. Admired as I was for beauty and piety—a woman’s most highly lauded virtues—few knew of my abilities. Indeed, it was assumed that, being a woman, I had none. In the case of an English invasion, who would fight for me? No one. France was a kingdom—and it must have, as soon as possible, a king.
    Unease scuttled like a spider in my clothes. Something was amiss. But what? I walked about the crowded cathedral, listening for treason in the mindless chatter of the nobles and their empty-headed wives, seeking improprieties on the gilded altar where the bishops lay the royal vestments—the purple hose embroidered with gold fleur-de-lis, the golden spurs, the scepter—and searching for adders in the folds of purple silk draping the throne. Everything appeared as it should, all ready and in place. So why the fluttering in my chest? Why the shaky feeling in my bones, as if the very earth were unstable?
    “My lady, the young king approaches.” Romano Bonaventura appeared, beaming, his teeth impossibly white. How could he smile? I felt as if my face would crack if I tried. “He cuts an exceptionally fine figure. You must be proud.”
    Proud? Of the fact that Louis was dead, bitterly poisoned by my cousin? If not for me and my terrible pride—my vanity—we would not have been in Rheims on that day, crowning his heir. Young Louis and his brothers would be running wild through the palace, up and down the stairs, bumping into servants, knocking table linens from their arms, screeching like children. That’s what my boy was, by God’s head: a child.
    Yet as I beheld him from the cathedral entrance, I felt my heart swell with just that: pride. He had never resembled his father more as he sat astride that great, dark destrier—my husband’s favorite. Indeed, Louis was exactly his age when first we met.
    The gold-and-blue irises—fleur-de-lis—my new husband presented to me. The appreciation in his sidelong glance. Saffron, Castille’s most precious export? I think not, my lady. How he made me blush! My grandmother had urged me to flatter him, falsely, if necessary. No one needs adoration more than princes and kings, she had said, who hear from their first breath that they are extraordinary. But I never needed to contrive with Louis. Adoration perfumed every word I ever spoke to him—and to our son, the product of our love, extraordinary indeed in his royal robes on his coronation day. Through my tear-filled gaze his image blurred, and for a moment I thought he was Louis himself, not the son but the Lion. His silken hair,